Key and Lock Problems

November 12, 2022

This morning, as I came back home after some errands… my key broke off in our front door lock.

Our door sticks a bit. And I’ve tended to put a bit more pressure on the key as I turn it (versus physically pulling the door towards me, to take some pressure off the key/bolt).

Well, I guess I did that one too many times… and slowly wore out the key. Because the thing just snapped clean off.

So with no way to open the front door, I walked to the kitchen door, in back. And to my surprise… I found that I couldn’t lock the door from the inside. I could lock it with a key from the outside, but the interior mechanism was jammed. What were the odds.

A bit later in the morning, I did some research and tackled both doors.

With the key broken off, there was very little material protruding from the lock. Trying to grab the key and pull it out wasn’t really viable. I looked up a few tutorials online, and found this one incredibly helpful:

I used a combination of some really small screwdrivers, and put pressure on the key from opposite sides… and was able to force the key out a bit. Enough to where I could grab it and pull it the rest of the way, manually.

The broken key, and a reminder that I shouldn’t be putting too much pressure on this guy.

For the back door – it was as simple as taking off the bolt, and clearing it of some debris. After taking it off the door and giving it a few turns… it started working like a peach. To me, this was the locksmithing equivalent of turning a computer off and on again.

Liz was out in the suburbs today, and had a standing order to buy two new deadbolts. I was happy to give her the update, and to let her know our existing deadbolts were working just fine.

Despite me not doing all that much, I felt like Bob Vila.